


the romans are at the gate

by marketchippie



Category: Marvel (Comics), Marvel Cinematic Universe, Marvel Ultimates
Genre: F/M, Sibling Incest
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-24
Updated: 2015-04-24
Packaged: 2018-03-25 13:12:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 870
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3811810
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/marketchippie/pseuds/marketchippie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Fragments are Wanda's language. (A vignette in Venice; reposted from LJ, 2011.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	the romans are at the gate

**Author's Note:**

> Originally written & posted in 2011, after reading Ultimates (based on the panel where [Pietro reads Wanda poetry in a gondola](http://31.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_llvyptlrIR1qbqxsx.png), which was the whole thing that got me reading Ultimates. Which I don't recommend, because it is awful, but again with the "Pietro reads Wanda poetry in a gondola" thing. These kids are in so damn deep with each other, worlds over).
> 
> Reposting as a sort of dubious gift to the post-AOU world, now that more people know them. I know they don't go to Venice in AOU, I know that the team context is different, but having found them in any number of comix 'verses, I can tell you straight that their behavior and their relationship is a pretty universal constant.

Venice is full of birds, fat scraggly pigeons that limn the canals in surprisingly straight lines, formations so nearly coherent that Wanda can’t help but wondering if they’re on purpose. Their wings never touch the water. The sun breaks over the choppy surface of the canals around the gondola in prismatic patterns, refracting in facets that shift and change. When Pietro pulls the canal up to streetside and reaches out a hand to help her climb up (gallant for her and her alone), she steps and feels herself caught between air and light, wind and water, between the flutter of wings on the cobblestone and the ripple of light on the canal, neither one lasting long. Birds above her and diamonds below: these are the kind of things that Wanda notices. Things that come in patterns, lovely and shifting and temporary, temporary most of all.  
  
She puts her foot down and the instabilities disperse and the ground is solid beneath her feet, her brother’s fingers warm against hers.  
  
The patterns around her fail to distract her from the patterns within, the queer skitter of her heartbeat that hasn’t calmed since Pietro stopped the gondola to pick up the call, the incremental dryness in her mouth, the drum of her fingers when they're not touching him. There are slow-growing but persistent fractures in the politics of the team back home—she can feel the cracks already, whether she wishes to or no. Fragments are Wanda's language, wherever she finds them.  
  
She does not tell Pietro this, and her fidgeting fingers calm as they intertwine with his. She will be still, she thinks to herself, always ready to wait and ready to fight. She must remind herself to be still.

The day had been still itself, still and whole and wonderful until the call had come, and she is not ready to give it up yet. The back of her tongue is still steeped in the bitter velvet of good Italian espresso and the sun has already baked a handful of freckles onto the bridge of her nose. It is not enough. None of it will last. These are mementos for now, in her body, on her skin, but they will all of them fade by evening. Every freckle, every bitter-giddy breath. She worries at what will replace them, what will edge into the space they’ve made for each other today. She worries in hairline cracks and uncertainties. But not aloud.

Instead, she leans against him as they pass through the crowded streets. A family of sticky-handed children parts around them, and she turns her cheek up to him. “I really did want that ice cream,” she says. “What’s the point of an Italian getaway without gelato?”

He glances down over his shoulder and lets her hand go. She feels herself flinch at the absence, but then he is there again, as if the absence was nothing at all, no time and no space, a top-heavy coneful of vanilla already melting onto his fingers. She smiles.  
  
“Think nothing of it,” he says, offering it to her.  
  
Behind them, she hears a child wailing. “Did you take this from a baby?” she teases.  
  
“We’re in a hurry.” He leans in, resting his head idly against hers, temple to temple. “And no one will believe the kid.”  
  
“That's my brother.”  
  
He laughs. It is a little thing—and her brother does not do little things easily. She smiles for him, then, and offers him the first bite of ice cream, which he takes.  
  
They were meant to have the day, if nothing else—the ice cream, like the rest, was meant to be savored slowly. They had made plans to take the gondola down to Byron’s villa, to stay there until the sky had gone dark. A self-contained gem of a day, not meant to be hurried. It was an unlikely promise: she had known that. It had been unlikely enough that she had hoped that it would endure. Twenty-four hours, at least. If anyone could fit all the time in the world into a single day, it'd be them. Her swift brother and her, who can twist the world by its edges.  
  
She has to choose not to, now, not to push their luck. She takes consolation, as they do hurry, moving in quick fluid tandem through the crowd, that there is a universe, even one trapped in nonexistence. Where they make it to the villa. Where both of their mouths taste like ice cream when her brother kisses her slowly in the foyer, where there is time to get to the end of a full poem. The day exists somewhere else, untouchable and lasting forever. This she knows, all the more acutely for not living it.

Instead, they traverse the street and her brother’s hand presses into the bare skin at the small of her back. She is here, stuck like a pin in the complicated map of the present, but so is he, and she lets the gaps of possibility seal up behind them because of it.  
  
Moving toward one of the crooked Venitian alleyways, they scatter people and pigeons like rolled dice in their wake. They do not look back.

**Author's Note:**

> If you want more of this, don't read Ultimates, it's the CORRECTLY NOTORIOUS worst. THAT SAID, if you are into the incredibly specific genre of "codependent twins in gondolas", you should read Megan Chance's _Inamorata_ , which is amazing. So amazing that I'm talking it up in an author's note for an unrelated fic! I can't give it credit, per se (I got here before it was published!! ...because Ults got here before me, whatever whatever etc. etc.), but I can say it's tonally on the level, and it's glorious.


End file.
